A Woman Involved (45 page)

Morgan was amazed. ‘Did you consider it?’

She shook her head. ‘Even though I was young and starry-eyed, I was old enough to know that so far it was only a sweet holiday romance.’ She went on flatly: ‘In the last week, they began to put the pressure on me.’

‘How?’

She ran her hand over her head.

‘We were invited to various student functions. Much talk of international peace and brotherhood, freedom from hunger and want. All good heady stuff. Then, came the soft-soap: Would I join the International Brotherhood of Students? And contribute articles for their newsletter? Yes, I would. Wonderful, sign here please.’ She took a breath. ‘Then came the punchline: Would I like to come back at Christmas, as a guest of the Soviet People, to attend a short but intensive course in “Comparative Philosophy”, to be held in the Urals?’ She looked at Morgan. ‘
Would
I? A free trip to Russia, plus a university course – in my subject. What an enrichment of my student life! Of course I accepted.’

Morgan lay back. Oh Jesus. ‘So what happened?’

‘The next day I left for England. With a tear in my eye for Ivan. And a lump in my throat for Russia. Back to dear old Exeter University. But the next month what happens? A phone call from Ivan! From
London.
He had indeed joined the diplomatic service. And posted to London!’ She clasped her hands coquettishly. ‘Oh, joy. How romantic. My handsome Russian has shown up! That weekend he came down to Exeter by train. And most weekends after that. A couple of times I went to London, and stayed in his quarters. All very romantic …’

Morgan did not particularly want to know the details. ‘Did you ever send any articles to the International Brotherhood of Students?’

She snorted bitterly. ‘A few. But only extracts of essays I had already written for my own professors, I was busy and I only did it to keep my end up.’ She took a weary breath. ‘Then, towards the end of November, my ardour for Ivan-the-Terrible began to cool. I began to find him boring. Repetitive. And I began to resent his constant assumption that I was a full-blooded, dedicated communist. His “Us against Them” attitude. I was beginning to mature, as a student of political science. Things weren’t so black and white as they had seemed. I was turning into a moderate socialist. I found I wasn’t even looking forward to going back to Russia. But I felt I should – it was too interesting an experience to miss.’ She sighed. ‘So; anyway, at the beginning of December I broke it off with Ivan. I told him I was sorry but I didn’t love him after all. That I had met somebody else – which I hadn’t.’

‘How did he take it?’

‘Apparently, very badly. He plagued me with anguished telephone calls. Flowers. Impassioned letters.’ She shook her head. ‘Finally he gave up, swearing eternal love.’

Morgan waited.

‘And … so Christmas came. And off I went to Russia. Rather unenthusiastically. I arrived in Moscow, transplaned to the Urals. Met, and taken up to the so-called university building. Very pretty setting, but it was like a small military barracks. Fenced. Dormitories. Mess hall. Not that I minded any of that, except there was no bloody
bar.
What I objected to was the course.’

Morgan smiled.

‘There were about thirty students. Both sexes. All nationalities, mostly black, but they all came from different parts of the British Commonwealth.’ She turned to him. ‘But they were all there to study so-called
Intelligence Techniques.
I was the only sucker who thought we were going to be studying Comparative Philosophy!’

Morgan smiled. ‘Go on.’

‘I soon found out. The first lecture: Surveillance. Second: Coding. Third: Communications … At lunchtime, I went to the boss and said, Hey, what’s all this crap for? Are you training me to be a spy? He said it was just basic survival instruction for friends of the Soviet Union – the philosophy lectures would start soon. He cautioned me not to cause trouble for myself.’ She looked at Morgan. ‘
“Survival!” Trouble!
I began to get scared then.’

Morgan nodded.

She said: ‘Bloody scared. What had I let myself in for? What would the authorities do back in Britain if they found out? Or America? But there was nothing I could do. There were military guards and we were miles from anywhere, in the depths of winter. And I worried what they might do if I kicked up a fuss. Nobody knew I was in Russia. So … I just had to grin and bear it. And attend the lectures.’ She sighed bitterly. ‘But I must admit they were quite interesting. I even did quite well in the tests. Especially in self-defence.’ She smiled wanly: ‘As you saw in Amsterdam.’

He smiled. ‘What were the other students like?’

‘All red-hot communists. Going to be spies and freedom fighters. We were under strict orders not to discuss our personal histories. But our dedication to the glorious revolution was taken for granted.’

‘What was discipline like?’

‘Strict. And
hard work.
Breakfast at six-thirty. First lecture at seven. Last lecture at eight pm. Lights out at ten.’

‘What else did they teach you?’

She waved a hand. ‘Later, let me tell the tale … So, at the end of three weeks I emerged from the Urals, a fully fledged little spy. I flew back to London, furious, but very relieved to be out. And who should be waiting for me at Heathrow airport?
Ivan-the-Terrible. With flowers and a car, to drive me back to Exeter.’ She snorted. ‘I was terrified of him now. Maybe he was part of the plot. I said ‘’No thank you, Ivan,” and I headed for the buses. He followed me, protesting love. Finally, I yelled “Leave me alone!” and I ran.’

‘Of course he was part of the plot. Did you ever see him again?’

She held up a silencing hand. ‘I lay low at Exeter for a month. I never went out except in a group. Ivan phoned several times but I refused to speak to him.’ She rubbed her brow. ‘I received several letters from the International Brotherhood begging for more pieces, but I destroyed them. Boy, was I scared. They hadn’t spent all that money on me for nothing, they’d want me to start spying soon, I was sure. But they didn’t contact me.’ She paused. ‘After a while I grew more confident that I had put them off.’ She took a weary breath. ‘What I didn’t realize was that I was a “sleeper”. Somebody they keep on ice, until they need him.’

He said grimly: ‘And? When was that?’

She took a sip of her wine.

‘I wrote my BA finals. Went home to Grenada for the summer holidays. Then I returned to university and started my Honours year. Still nothing happened. Then … I met you.’

She turned her head to him. ‘“Ninety glorious days,” we called it.’ She smiled sadly. ‘How many times did we make love in those ninety days, I wonder? Lord, how did we ever pass our exams? And I wonder why I didn’t get pregnant, with all that loving?’

His eyes burnt. ‘You told me you’d gone on the pill.’

She smiled sadly, and turned back to the fire. ‘Another little lie. I didn’t want worry to spoil anything. And I was so in love I
longed
to be pregnant by you.’

He put his hand on hers. ‘Well, maybe you are now.’

She sat up. She ran her hands through her hair.

‘So, we did pass our exams. And we went to Grenada to introduce you to my parents, then you went back to sea for four terrible months. And I began to prepare for our wonderful wedding.’

Morgan waited. Then said: ‘But there was Max.’

‘There was
always
Max. Since I was a teenager. We were
never lovers. But he was always hanging around. Always waiting to marry me. And yes, he really put the pressure on me now. And there was pressure from my family and friends to think again – they said I hardly knew you. And yes, there were times when I was assailed by doubts …’ She ran her fingers through her hair. ‘But oh God, that isn’t why I didn’t marry you, Jack …’

He waited. She pressed her fingertips to her eyelids; then lowered her hands. She said:

‘One day, about two weeks before our wedding, I was sitting on the beach. Alone. When a man came along. A white man. He walked up to me. He smiled, and he pulled a photo album out of his bag. He handed it to me. I thought he was a beach photographer. He said: “Remember your friends.” And he walked away.’

She stared at the fire a long moment. Morgan waited

‘I was astonished. I opened the album.’ She paused. She went on flatly: ‘It contained dozens of photographs, of me in Russia. Unmistakably Russia, the Kremlin in the background, et cetera. With Ivan. And …’ She paused again. ‘Dozens and
dozens
of photographs of me in bed with him.’ She glared at the fire. Taken in my hotel room in Moscow. And in his quarters in London.’ She clenched her fist. ‘The bastards must have had cameras hidden all over those rooms, to get the best angles.’ She pointed at the envelope he had found in Max’s deposit box. ‘Those are some of them.’

Morgan stared. ‘Those are you?’

She said flatly: ‘Me. The rejects. Ones they couldn’t use because they’re too indistinct, I suppose.’

Morgan was amazed. ‘Oh, God …’ He squeezed her hand.

She said: ‘Which was another reason why I was rather anxious to get to that deposit box. I wasn’t sure they were in there, but nobody likes pictures like that of themselves doing the rounds of Whitehall.’

‘But how did they come to be in Max’s box?’

‘I’m not sure, but I’ll come to that.’ She took a big, bitter breath. ‘And there were photocopies of my application to join the International Brotherhood, translated, showing that I signed a pledge to further the cause of international communism. And photocopies of my enrolment at the spy-school.
Classroom photographs of me. Under the picture of Lenin. Learning to use equipment. Learning self-defence. Plus my instructor’s report on me.
Oh
so favourable! Plus extracts from my essays that. I had sent the International Brotherhood – distorted, taken out of context …’

She turned to him. Her eyes smouldering.

‘
That
’s why I didn’t marry you, Jack Morgan! … 
Couldn’t
marry you! … Because they were telling me that they had the goods on me to make me spy on my future husband! … On the second-in-command of one of Her Majesty’s nuclear submarines! … And if I refused they would denounce me! And
ruin
you …’ She cried: ‘
That’s why I couldn’t marry you, Jack … 
’

She threw herself back on the bed. She held her face.

That night seemed unreal. The complete silence of the snowy mountains, the candlelight. Morgan fetched more wine from the kitchen. They lay deep in the double bed, and the rest of the story came out.

And that’s why she married Max. To cut herself off from Jack Morgan completely, so no harm could be done to him. Distance herself from him completely, to destroy the power of the blackmailer over him. And, yes, to protect herself too, from having to lead a double life. She could not be blackmailed into divulging anything about Max, he had no official secrets to exchange.

‘Did you ever tell Max?’

‘Of course! That was the only way to destroy the power of the blackmailer – make a clean breast, have nothing to hide. But I could not have done that with you. If I had told you that I was supposed to be a Russian spy, you would either have had to confess it to the Navy and thereby ruin your career because the Navy would never trust a senior officer with an ex-spy for a wife. Or you’d have had to cover it up and be blackmailed …’

Morgan lay beside her in the firelight and saw it all: the fear, the heartbreak. She felt frantic. She had to be alone to think, and she was frightened of being alone, in case the messenger came back. She drove. Morgan saw the sun on the turquoise waters, the palms, the white beaches, the heavy tropical foliage,
the car driving round and round the beautiful island, parked at the lonely beaches; starting again, driving on.

‘The human body finally protects itself from the exhaustion of indecision – it finally just shuts down. I used to fall into exhausted sleep the moment I went to bed. But I only slept a few hours and then I was wide awake again, in the dark …’

It took five awful days and nights to know what she had to do. And, oh, the heartbreak once she truly knew it.

On the sixth day she got up before dawn, and drove through the fragrant darkness to her favourite beach. She walked along the dark sands. Then she knelt down and she prayed. Finally she returned to the car, she watched the sun rise, the tears running down her face. When the sun was well up she drove into Saint George’s, to the post office. And she wrote out the telegram to Morgan telling him that she was marrying Max. She walked back to her car, and her heart broke, and she dropped her head and she wept, and wept.

Later that morning, she drove to Max’s house. He was surprised – he had not seen her for days. She walked into the dining room, and asked the servant to leave. She stood at the table, and she told him she would marry him the following day in Las Vegas.

‘When did you tell Max about the Russians?’

She said flatly, ‘I intended telling him only after I had married him. But that would have been deceitful. When we got to Las Vegas, I broke down and told him. That night. In bed.’ She took a deep breath. ‘It was our first night in bed together, remember. We were getting married in the morning. I was numb.’ She sighed. ‘I told him about my first tourist visit to Russia, the fun, the International Brotherhood, Ivan. My trip back to Russia. The spy-school. How furious I was …’

Morgan waited. She stared at the fire.

‘But I didn’t tell him everything.’ She snorted bitterly. ‘I was weak. I did not tell him about the Russian messenger coming to me on the beach. About his album of pornographic photographs, my essays. I did not tell him that was why I could not marry you …’ She shook her head. ‘I deceived him. I told it as a confession of something I had done long ago when I was a starry-eyed student.’ She snorted softly. ‘I simply said that
after a lot of soul searching I realized that I did not love you after all. That you were only a flash in the pan.’ She clenched her fist. ‘I
lied
to him. Even when I was trying not to deceive him, I lied to him! …’

With all his battered heart Morgan did not blame her. ‘What did he say?’